View Full Version : Making yourself happy!
On my journey to clambering out of the health anxiety cycle, I read a book called Conscious Medicine by Gillian Edwards. It was all about how our mental state has an effect on our health, and basically how when we work to be in a good mental state it generally has a good effect on our health too.
One phrase in the book really stood out to me, it was basically talking about how we are "wired for happiness" - how we function at our best when we have a good baseline level of happiness and plenty of the endorphins (happy hormones) that help us feel good both physically and mentally.
Speaking about it with a therapist she agreed and told me how making attempts at raising our mood levels, even small attempts, on a daily basis will slowly help raise our overall happiness levels and allow us to deal better with anxiety and stress. She called it getting Happy Hits, and stressed how important it was to try and give ourselves as many Happy Hits as possible in our daily lives.
They can come from the smallest of things, and you can even get so good at it that you can create the feeling and release some of those good hormones by simply thinking about it or picturing something that makes you happy.
From talking to others about this, I noticed that many people initially feel guilty about the concept of spending time making themselves happy or doing small things for themselves. I'm not sure why this happens, but I know I've experienced it myself. It seems almost selfish to focus so much on yourself.
But when you begin the process you'll find that it's actually a joyful thing and there's nothing to feel guilty about. Looking after your happiness levels leaves you in a better position to take care of your mental and physical health, and to pay more attention to the loved ones in your life. Getting Happy Hits can even involve your loved ones if you wish :)
So, I just wanted to write all of that out and explain a bit about the importance of making ourselves happy in little ways. Every day!
I wanted to ask some of you to share how you get your own Happy Hits, or how you plan to get them, and share the little things you do to boost your mood during your day.
To get my own little Happy Hits I:
- put on my favourite perfume before I leave the house
- use a scented body cream after the shower (nice scents really make me happy!)
- open the window in the early morning so I can lie in bed & listen to the birds singing
- buy my favourite magazine once a month & read it on a quiet Saturday morning
- cut out photos of sweet animals & pin them to my noticeboard at work
- watch a TV show that will make me laugh
- put on some relaxing music or birdsong to listen to as I fall asleep
- write with my favourite pen at work
- try a new recipe once a week
- read and relax with candlelight or low light in the evenings before bed
- go for a walk early in the morning when the world is quiet & fresh
- wear my favourite colours most days
- read a good book on the bus to work
The point is not that these are simple things I can do in my every day life, but that I use them to focus on giving myself a feeling of enjoyment, relaxation and pleasure, to purposefully create a good feeling and allow myself to really feel it. In all our focus on health worries we often forget to pay attention to the things that make us happy, it's worth putting some work in to looking at what we pay attention to each day. Maybe in the future we can look at getting larger Happy Hits by setting goals and working towards them!
How will you get your little Happy Hits? :)
Great post Honeylove...and a good idea...but (there is always a but) some people ,may not be ready for happy hits if they have depression.... but I know what you mean and try to find things to be "glad" about everyday:D
sarah
Great post HLove... it doesn't just apply to anxiety recovery but to life in general.
Positive thoughts
I know what you mean Sarah, with depression it can be quite a struggle to do any of these things. That's why we keep them small at first, something simple, maybe even just one a day.
I've been there myself, sometimes it's hard to move, you feel frozen. But as you move it slowly gets easier, especially once you realise that it can make you feel good. It's worth the extra effort to fight through and do even one thing a day.
Great post Honeylove...and a good idea...but (there is always a but) some people ,may not be ready for happy hits if they have depression.... but I know what you mean and try to find things to be "glad" about everyday:D
sarah
When I was dealing with some depression, what HLove is saying was discussed with the therapist I was seeing. Yes, there were times the last thing I wanted to do was go for a walk or sit outside in the sunlight but I forced myself to do it. Otherwise, I would be trapped in the cycle of depression.
You have to break the cycle of behaviors or thought patterns you're currently in to change them. I don't know if it's a matter of being ready or a matter of disliking something to the point of wanting to change it. Yes, it's hard sometimes. You have to ask yourself, what feels worse? Is it better to sit inside or stay in bed worrying or sit on the front step listening to the birds?
Positive thoughts
Yep definitely get your point Fishman/Honeylove:D
worryworryworry
08-05-14, 17:26
Happy Hits:
Evening Milk time with my two toddlers in bed watching peppa pig!
Having freshly washed Hair!
Speaking to my babies while I'm at work
Organising my cupboards/drawers/handbag! (that's a bad one - but I love it!)
Cooking in general!
Reading bedtime stories
B x
They all sound lovely B, especially the evening milk time, I love that :)
Next time you're doing one of these try to focus on the good feelin they give you, remember it and bring it with you into the rest of your day.
I love this post, what a lovely idea.
Mine are:
Great friends at work who make me laugh
The dog running round the fields
A real fire
The first cup of tea in the morning, lying in bed
All these things are just brilliant
:-)
I'm sure many know the song "Happy" by Pharrell Williams. It's a rather infectious pop song (not to be confused with infectious diseases! ;) ).
This is a version by a guy that goes by Fresh Big Mouf along with one of my favorites, Kina Grannis. This guy uses real things to make the music and beats for his videos. Guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.
Happy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lwy8ZEaRByg)
Positive thoughts
The first cup of tea in the morning, lying in bed
Flossy next time you're enjoying that cup of tea quietly in bed, try this little exercise. Focus on your heartbeat for a minute, imagine you are breathing through your heart. Then, think about a memory, a person, or something/anything that makes you happy, think about that good feeling you get with your first cup of tea and focus on it. Hold it for as long as you can, allow yourself to feel how good it is and take note of where you feel it in your body. Then let it all go.
You'll find a resonance of that good feeling stays with you for a little while, and eventually you'll be able to conjure it up easily :)
Happy Hits
Rosemary Mint shampoo
That first cup of coffee in the morning
Reading the New York Times on a Sunday morning
Cool breeze while driving down the road
My dog, Jackson, when her ear turns wrong side out
My dog, Cash, when he begs for a cookie
Candles and a great bubble bath
Friends that make me laugh
Candles and a great bubble bath
That's one of my favourites too Tanner! In fact I'm going to do that this evening after work, perfect way to end the week :)
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Fresh flowers in the house
This is a lovely one, buy yourself some flowers this weekend if you can :)
Thanks honey love I will.
Lovely to read all these great happy hits :-)
This is a fantastic idea and some peoples points are very nice to read (especially cutting cute animal photos out and placing them on notice board). However, the things I enjoy (reading a book, watching 'Red Dwarf' as it reminds me of my childhood, and eating my favorite foods), don't actually make me feel happy anymore :-(
I even bought a lavender room spray as I love lavender scent and although it smells lovely, I don't feel any positive emotion toward it.
I may still look into it and then at the bare minimum at least I can tick it off my 'tried and tested' list.
anxious_thoughts
10-05-14, 22:18
Loved reading this post, it made me happy just reading it!
Great post. It made me happy just reading it! It is the little things that make us happy. Worry worry worry I also have evening milk time with my little ones but we watch Caillou :)
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Jenn we posted at the same time the same thing lol are my long lost little sister?
This is a fantastic idea and some peoples points are very nice to read (especially cutting cute animal photos out and placing them on notice board). However, the things I enjoy (reading a book, watching 'Red Dwarf' as it reminds me of my childhood, and eating my favorite foods), don't actually make me feel happy anymore :-(
I even bought a lavender room spray as I love lavender scent and although it smells lovely, I don't feel any positive emotion toward it.
I may still look into it and then at the bare minimum at least I can tick it off my 'tried and tested' list.
KeeKee when you are really down sometimes it can be hard to remember those feelings. So take it slowly, start with something small and focus on it. Do as Fishmanpa says and just sit outside and listen to the birds sing, and listen in your body to how it makes you feel. When you feel a glimmer of good feeling hold on to it and take it with you into your day xx
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Loved reading this post, it made me happy just reading it!
Glad to hear that Jenn, what are your happy hits??
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Great post. It made me happy just reading it! It is the little things that make us happy. Worry worry worry I also have evening milk time with my little ones but we watch Caillou :)
Glad to see that you took something from it too RoseEve :) We can build up lots of little things in our day to give an overall feeling of happiness, it's just about being more aware of your actions and actually focusing on raising your mood. It's such a nice exercise!
Great post Honey Love. When I was really struggling I would have poo pood your happy hits list, in fact as I was often frantic and angry I would have wanted you to shove it up your a...e! Only a lobotomy or EST or strong medication were going to change my mindset. I am now in a place where I realise the GREAT importance of happy hits not only on your immediate mood but on your overall sense of self worth. For someone like myself with 'monkey brain' mindfulness is my challenge and practising it is a real happy hit, as is sitting with a coffee typing this before the kids get up listening to the birdsong and watching 4 white doves who are permanently perched on my neighbours roof. I wish I could manage my old favourite of a relaxing bath with lotions and potions, but alas, as somebody scared of their own body, I am not quite there yet!
anxious_thoughts
13-05-14, 07:01
Great post. It made me happy just reading it! It is the little things that make us happy. Worry worry worry I also have evening milk time with my little ones but we watch Caillou :)
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Jenn we posted at the same time the same thing lol are my long lost little sister?
I just saw your post, Rose. Hahaha! I must be!!
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Honeylove, my happy hits are:
Going to concerts
Head massages
Sitting out on the deck on a hot summer day
Going out for ice cream with my parents
Baking cookies with my grandma
Relaxing in bed after a long day
Feeling indestructible! (When I feel anxiety free for the day)
Cuddling with my boyfriend
Spending the day watching tv series' on Netflix
Listening to music in the shower
Getting kisses from my dog
Great post Honey Love. When I was really struggling I would have poo pood your happy hits list, in fact as I was often frantic and angry I would have wanted you to shove it up your a...e! Only a lobotomy or EST or strong medication were going to change my mindset. I am now in a place where I realise the GREAT importance of happy hits not only on your immediate mood but on your overall sense of self worth. For someone like myself with 'monkey brain' mindfulness is my challenge and practising it is a real happy hit, as is sitting with a coffee typing this before the kids get up listening to the birdsong and watching 4 white doves who are permanently perched on my neighbours roof. I wish I could manage my old favourite of a relaxing bath with lotions and potions, but alas, as somebody scared of their own body, I am not quite there yet!
I know just what you mean Luc, sometimes we have to be in the right place in our heads to really hear certain advice. It's great that you're in that place now and are able to see and reap the benefit of working on improving your own happiness levels. It's so rewarding when you finally reach that place.
Maybe you could start with something like a little foot bath, give yourself a pedicure and pamper your feet for a bit. Then you can work your way up to having a full on bath someday :)
Having a bath is one of my favourites too, and sometimes I get a spike of anxiety when I'm trying a new product to mix with the bath water. But I just tell myself to let the fear go, don't allow it to stop my enjoyment and focus on feeling good instead. By recognising the fear as irrational, and letting it pass instead of dwelling on it further, it gives me a certain level of control over how my brain & body react to an intrustive anxiety thought. It takes a little practice but as time goes by I'm getting better and better at it. I'm now considering flying to visit family in Belgium this summer, I haven't flown in years because I'm afraid of it, but I'm thinking about giving my anxiety one hell of a challenge and really facing up to this fear!
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Honeylove, my happy hits are:
Going to concerts
Head massages
Sitting out on the deck on a hot summer day
Going out for ice cream with my parents
Baking cookies with my grandma
Relaxing in bed after a long day
Feeling indestructible! (When I feel anxiety free for the day)
Cuddling with my boyfriend
Spending the day watching tv series' on Netflix
Listening to music in the shower
Getting kisses from my dog
Getting puppy kisses is such a lovely one Jenn! My housemate has two little dogs and it's such therapy playing with them and having a cuddle sometimes. I try to make a point of playing with them every day so that I can have a little happy hit!
Thanks HL for your words of support. I go in the bath twice daily but this entails all of my avoidance techniques. I would love to leave my boobs in the bedroom and pick them up after my bath but ....... When we have been on holiday or to that wedding or Christmas is over blah, blah, blah...I will bathe like a 'normal' person but until then strategic planning (very hot water, spray foam body wash, eyes shut, dark towel) ha I sound like a fruit loop! I will always find an excuse with an impending event however I'm in a place now where I am going to give it a go. Am I right in thinking that accepting the anxiety is just that and that I am not missing anything. So you don't avoid and you don't distract you just feel the anxiety?
I'll use the example of trying out new bath salts to show you the difference between my thought processes back when I was very anxious, and my thought processes now!
In the past it would have looked like this:
- stepping into bath, it occurs to me that I haven't used these bath salts before
- what if I have an allergic reaction or they make me feel weird
- dwell on that thought a little, hesitate to use the new salts even
- sit in bath with worry about allergic reaction
- be aware of every bodily sensation, just to make sure that it's normal
- any sign of something feeling weird will make anxiety spike further
- begin to become aware of heart beat
- anxiety is heightened so I worry about feeling even more anxious, fear of fear
- eventually get out of bath because I'm convinced I feel weird or because I just can't relax
- for the next few hours anxious feelings will be heightened as I wait and see if I have a reaction to the bath salts
- I'll probably check my pulse rate quite a few times and worry if I feel it's too high
- result is relaxation time in bath ruined and anxious feelings are worse!
Thought process now:
- step into bath using new bath salts, occurs to me I haven't used them before and they might not agree with me
- recognise that this is an intrusive anxious thought, it's my brain on alert for problems so that it can warn me of any danger
- accept that it's just an anxious thought, nothing more than that and there's no real danger here
- recognise that I have the power to control my thoughts and dwell on the anxious ones if I want to, but this will have the result of making me feel worse
- let the thought go, without dwelling on it or the feeling of fear that it might bring
- if the thought comes back, continue to acknowlege it for just being an intrusive thought and let it go again, choose not to feel fear
- continue to enjoy bath and feel extra relaxed afterwards!
I read this helpful article on intrusive thoughts a few months ago, and I found that it really helped me to understand the anxious thoughts that pop into my head and how not engaging with them is the key:
http://www.drmartinseif.com/resources/intrusive-thoughts.html
We can't really stop intrusive thoughts from happening, but we can choose not to pay them any attention and not to let the feeling of anxiety they might bring go any further. We have more control over our reactions than we think. The more we do this the easier it gets. In truth I don't even have much of a thought process around this stuff anymore, I'm just so used to recognising it for what it is and letting it go.
I hope some of that makes sense to you :)
Thanks HL Many thanks again. This is what I do not understand, my 64,000 dollar question, if you like. How do you allow the thoughts in your mind without engaging with them. So if you don't push the thoughts out of your mind and you don't engage with them but you do let them in what is happening in this this though limbo state?????!
A thought it just a thought, thousands of them will flash through your mind every day but if you think about it you're probably dwelling longer on the anxious ones. In a way you've probably trained yourself to pay attention to them. This shows you that you can control what's going on in your head, you're just not too aware of it at the moment. Does that make sense?
When a thought floats in to my mind and I recognise it as an anxious one, I will say to myself "This is just an anxious thought, I can't use up time and energy worrying about it, I cannot waste time worrying about things that may never happen" so I just choose to let it go and begin thinking about something else, usually something that makes me feel good. I move on in my thoughts, I choose not to stay and think more about the anxious one. Sometimes they will pop back in, but that's OK, I just repeat the process and move on in my thoughts again. There were many CBT exercises I used to do on particular thoughts, but as time went on I didn't need to do them anymore.
It does take practice, but it gets easier and more unconscious in a way.
I've learned that it's our thoughts that create fear and continue the cycle of anxiety. So say I think about an allergic reaction to the bath salts and choose to dwell on it a little - my brain does not know the difference between a real and imagined threat, so it believes that the bath salts are a threat and it will begin to release stress hormones into my body to prepare me to deal with the threat.
These hormones will do things like speed up my heart rate and make me feel on edge, and these physical sensations then make me feel even more anxious and worried, which will in turn prompt my brain and body to release even more stress hormones. So you see how dwelling on an anxious thought can create this cycle of stress, worry and chemicals in our body. The worse we feel, the more stress chemicals will be released, and the more anxious thoughts we will have. Once you regonise this cycle it becomes easier to cut it off at the anxious thought and control your reaction to worries.
So I will have an anxious thought, but recognise that if I continue to think about it it's likely to have a negative effect and make me feel more anxious. So to avoid that cycle I move past the initial anxious thought and begin thinking about something else.
It's all about being very aware of your thought processes and what control you actually have about how you're feeling. Did you say you did CBT? I can't remember.
What is it about bathing that makes you feel anxious? Maybe we can do some work on rationalising it for you.
Oh Lordy, I have wrote an essay type response for you HL and lost it. Does anyone know if you can save your posts while writing them, or matter of fact, where mine has gone ha? :doh:
Oh no luc! That's happened to me too, and I can't figure it out I'm afraid you'll have to type it again :(
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